I was having a discussion the other day with a fellow web developer about different options available for paying for web apps. At the moment, the common trend is to offer monthly payment plans with fixed allowances / features. Once someone nears the end of their plan, they simply upgrade to the next.

Back in 2007, Paul Farnell wrote this article on Carsonified about “How to price your web app”. It details a few ideas on how you could charge / price your web baby.

I’ve taken a moment to analyse what the pros and cons of this method are:

Pros

• People know what they’re paying on a monthly basis.
• People can upgrade when required
• Usually these systems come with a free limited account

Cons

• Although extra plans exist, you cannot assume the customers would be aware of their options to upgrade
• Any notices / mentions of the ability to upgrade can appear to “chase” the user to upgrade.
• People might pay for more than what they want to use. For example they might not use all their allocated allowance for the £20/month plan, but might have grown out of the £10/month plan.

Now, i know that a lot of systems out there have pay-monthly plans, but here at codepotato we’ve been thinking of ways of combating the problems with pay-monthly web apps. A few of the alternatives to “pay monthly” are:

• Fixed fee plans (1 plan suits all)
• Pay as you use (used in cloud computing / online storage systems)
• Top-up and go (used on the Envato marketplaces, like themeforest)

Would welcome any comments you have on this matter, and whether you are aware of any pro’s / con’s that i’ve missed.